breathe in, breathe out
by a simple space nerd
Summary: Desmia, Lana, Marcus, Flora, Lenore, Thomas, Kevin, Jim. TarsusIV left different marks in many different ways. Surviving doesn't mean you're a survivor, and living doesn't mean you're alive. These are the stories for the ones left behind, the ones who ran ahead, and the ones who stayed in between. These are the stories of Tarsus before, during, and after. (There's no moving on.)
1. Chapter 1

Desmia knows it's logical, and that's probably the worst part.

Kodos kills her family, her friends, her village. And even as she's running, holding the blond boy's hand, it's logical. It makes sense. _Your continued existence means slow death-_ she's lost everything- _to the more valued members of the colony-_ and yet she doesn't see any alternative that could have been taken.

If she was Kodos, would she have done the same?

She runs with the others, she shoots her phaser without flinching, she scavengers for food, and she knows it's only logical. She buries her friends, she kills, and she weeps like her heart is breaking. (Maybe it is.)

Who was it that said Vulcans couldn't feel?

( _Maybe_ , she thinks on one of the coldest nights where her fingertips go a greeny-blue colour and her teeth chatter consistently, _she's just not Vulcan enough._ Her grandmother was Vulcan, and Desmia had always embraced her culture with a fierce passion that seemed rather human in retrospect. Now she has shed tears, lost hope, regained it, now she barely feels anything at all.)

The first night, when they've been running for hours on end and everyone is exhausted beyond words, she looks at the bloody blisters on her feet and wonders at the fact that only forty-eight hours ago she was wearing scuffed up leather shoes and having her hair brushed by her mother. They weren't wealthy, Desmia's family, but once they were content. Now she sits in a dead forest, limbs aching more than they ever have, watching the littlest children fall into oblivion, their blond saviour standing guard.

He'd found her, lying as still as she could, surrounded by her dead village members. There'd been a kid on his back and two others hiding behind his legs. "Come with us," he'd said, bloody and tired and really just a child, they were all just _children_ , and Desmia had let him pull her to her feet without protest. She still isn't sure why she listened to him, the boy she'd known for all of twenty seconds. Was it logical?

He lowers himself gingerly onto the tree stump beside her, concealing the pain that he must surely be feeling. Desmia saw him carry the sick four year old girl on his back the whole time they were running. His weary blue eyes look at her in concern. "You okay?" He whispers, voice making him seem both younger and older than he appears, and then he looks away quickly. "Stupid question, I guess." Desmia watches him, exhaustion seeping into her bones. "You should get some rest," he croaks. "I'll stand watch."

Desmia tilts her head. "That is illogical," she replies, "you have been running longer than I have. I will keep watch." This is easy. She knows how to do this. Numbers, words, reason. (She doesn't want to keep watch.)

Blue eyes looks back at her and his lips try to smile. "Rest," he says. "Please." Desmia hesitates. "It'll be okay," he stresses. "Desmia, _sleep_."

How does he remember her name? She doesn't know his.

(She knows other things about him, though. A pathological need to protect those in his care. Extremely resilient and physically able. Wary of authority. Used to running, or possibly hiding. Desmia is Vulcan, though maybe not completely, and she knows how to read people. Unfortunately for her, he does too.)

He gives her a hand getting of the stump and she knows his eyes are scanning the forest and the children as she drifts into sleep. She doesn't know his name, but she trusts him already.

* * *

(One day, she will give her life for him.)

* * *

(His name, she will never learn, is Jim.)


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I suppose I should say hello, so hello! Firstly, thank you for reading my story. This is my first time publishing fanfiction properly; and reviews, if you have the time, would be greatly appreciated. I'm fairly new to this fandom and I haven't watched much TOS, so please be gentle. Have a lovely day and remember that Jim Kirk would jump off a drill for you even if he'd just met you... it's definitely canon.**

Lana has been falling in love with people since before she can remember. Her Granny says it's because of her parents. They eloped, and Lana still thinks it's terribly romantic. They called her Liana, after Daddy's ma, but Daddy's voice sounded like honey and the letters all blurred together. That's what Ma says, anyways, and so Liana became Lana. She doesn't remember much from when she lived on Daddy's little farm. Ma smiled more, she thinks. Daddy dies, though, so Ma puts on her brave face and holds Lana's hand and they walk right up to Granny's door when Lana is two years old. (Ma cries. Granny does too. Lana stares at them both in bewilderment.)

Lana loves it at Granny's farm. She plays outside all day, and her hair goes white-blond and her skin grows freckled. She looses her front teeth when she runs into their fence, and Ma looks more and more harried. Granny sits Lana on her lap one day and whispers that Ma wasn't _always_ quite so tired. Once upon a time, she says, Ma was just like Lana. Granny tells Lana that when her daddy died he broke Ma's heart. For some reason, this makes Lana very sad. Love, she decides, is supposed to make you happy. She doesn't want Ma's kind of love, the kind that leads to quiet tears and broken nails, whispered prayers and shadows under once-clear eyes.

* * *

When she is four years old, Granny lets her help with the harvest for the first time. The Tarsus fields are yellow and tall and beautiful. Lana runs through them and pretends she's an adventurer. The grass is razor sharp and cuts her skin but Lana doesn't care. _Pain is beauty,_ said Rosie from next door. Lana isn't sure what it means but it sounds mysterious and perfectly tangy on her tongue. Ma clucks her tongue and sighs when she's wiping the blood from Lana's face. "This planet is dangerous," she scolds, and Granny rolls her eyes. "But it's so beautiful," replies Lana. It's okay to be pretty and scary at the same time, she decides. Granny is both, after all, and one day Lana will be too.

* * *

When she turns six, Granny says they needn't bother collecting the harvest. Her voice is all funny, kind of brittle and angry. Ma yells at her and Lana hides in the attic. She stares at her fingers and wonders when they got to be so thin.

A few months later, they get a letter telling them to go to the town square. Granny says _absolutely not_ , and Ma's lips press together and go white. She doesn't argue, and Lana watches the letter burning in the fireplace in fascination. She can hear Ma and Granny whisper-talking together for hours that night, and she wonders what Daddy would say if he still breathed.

Eight days after the letter arrives, someone knocks on the door. It's Gio, Lana's best friend who she wants to marry one day. "Run," he tells them, and Lana screams because two of his fingers are missing _. Pain is beauty_ , she hears like a whisper of days long gone. Ma goes very pale and Granny grows very serious.

They don't make it far. Ma hoists Lana into a tree and tells her to stay still and quiet, which Lana has never been very good at, but today she is so scared that she can't even speak. Ma isn't crying. Granny isn't either. Lana thinks that they're both terribly brave. She watches through the branches and sees the soldiers come and she _can't look away._

She doesn't climb down from the tree until it's been dark for so long that her fingers have begun to bleed from gripping the bark so tightly. Ma's eyes are still open and Lana just wants her to wake up because she's just so scared. She doesn't cry. Time passes. She knows she has to eat something, but there is an aching sadness inside her that keeps her from moving even an inch. A darkness is born inside her and instantly swallows her whole. Some small part of her wonders dimly if this is what Ma felt like when Daddy died.

* * *

A boy runs up to her and she doesn't see him until his hands are lifting her up from the ground where she crouches. She stares at him, this boy covered in blood and dust and sweat, and all she can see are his blue, blue eyes. (Ma had blue eyes too.) His hands are covered in blood. (So is Granny's chest.) "Are you okay?" He asks, and Lana starts to cry.

(Ma's eyes were blue like the sky and solid, sturdy things. They crinkled when she laughed and went a funny grey colour when she was angry or sad. She never let herself cry in front of her daughter but she raised Lana to know that crying didn't make you weak or helpless anyway. Granny's chest was where Lana would curl up on when she was scared, rocking in Granny's old chair, listening to her humming and the click of knitting needles. Granny had a loud voice and a quiet laugh and when she laughed her entire body would quake, seeming anything but frail, despite her years.)

He swings her onto his back, and she lets him. "I'm sorry. We have to go," he says, voice all raspy like he isn't used to talking, and Lana weeps into his back. She doesn't look over her shoulder as he runs through the dead razor-grass, because even though she is only little, she knows she doesn't want to remember her family like that; lying there; still and quiet and dead. They run for what must be hours.

He slips her off his thin back, which must be aching, and takes her hand. The blood on his hands has dried and crusted into the whorls of his fingers. _What has he done,_ she wonders. _What has he become_.

* * *

She changes, over the next few days-weeks-hours-months, maybe into somehow who could have climbed down from that tree and saved her little family, maybe.

J.T, her wild-eyed saviour, is starting to look more and more like her Ma did, towards the end. Tired. Desperate. She loves him, in her own way, as they all do. Desmia tries to give him some extra food when he donates all his to sickly Kit. Thomas offers to sit watch one night. Lana joins him in the hunt for food and shelter. The youngest pile on top of him and lure him to sleep with their slow breathing.

They run, together or alone, racing through the dead woods and lonely fields, until the reach the cliff faces, where they scramble down miles and miles of vertical rock. Fingers slipping, feet bleeding, clothes ripping- jumping down only to sprint off again, quick _quick_ because soldiers patrol every three hours. Hunt, search, seek; run and hide and leap into the sky. The days blur into each other, but Lana is still young enough that she falls into this routine easily. This becomes her norm; hide fight _survive._ She sees the sad look in J.T's eyes sometimes, when he thinks no one's looking (someone's _always_ looking,) when he hears the little ones discussing the day as if it's normal.

Lana doesn't forget her Ma and her Granny, but she needs to move on in order to survive so she does.

* * *

She cries when they have to leave J.T behind. He pushes them on, eyes soft, arm broken, trapped in the cave he's too big to crawl away from. She's not the oldest in their group of survivors, but she feels like it. She starts to think that maybe Ma's kind of love is all that there really is.

* * *

Starfleet shows up far too late, too late to do any good, too late to do anything but stare in horror and _fascination- how dare they- _at the things they're suddenly seeing, too late to be anything but heroes. A female officer tries to hold her hand reassuringly, and Lana whips it away, glaring, fighting down the instinct to _dart forward, elbow to solar plexus, uppercut to the nose, knife slipped from sleeve, holding up to her exposed throat and-_ the officer lets her go, concerned eyes following her in confusion.

Lana hates them, so, _so_ much, but she loves them too because they have medical supplies and food and shelter and Lana's not quite so responsible anymore, not in their eyes. Lana loves them, in her bitter, vindictive, _cruel_ little way, because they take one look at her and file her off as small, meek, _traumatised_ little girl. Seven, eight, nine ears of age, blonde, shy. They don't see the butter knives hidden in her boots, the blood staining her lips, the thick calluses under her weary feet.

They sit her at a table and ask her questions; _how do you feel, what do you think, are you okay?_ Lana smiles and bats her eyelashes and leans back. Her Ma and Granny may have been the ones who taught her to live, but she learned how to survive from an _entirely_ different group of people.

Starfleet can't hold her down anywhere she doesn't want to be, but they can try. Lana's got her whole life to live in front of her; loves to be lost, battles to be won, places to see and people to find. Lana may have been falling in love since she was a little girl, but she's always moved on. The thing about heartbreak, she's learned, is that it's easy enough to move on from if you try hard enough.

It doesn't mean she's forgotten Ma and Granny and Gio and Desmia and J.T. It doesn't mean she loves them any less, either; it just means that Lana will not be the side character in her own narrative. It would be easy to be consumed by her anger like she can see Flora is, easy to fold in on herself like Marcus; to be bitter or scared or too shy or too loud. _Pain is beauty_ , she hears dear old dead Rosie muse.

She needs to move on in order to really _live_ , so she does.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Woah! 167 views, 2 reviews, and 10 followers?! That's AMAZING! (please don't stop!) Seriously though _thank you so much_! Reviews make me happy. :) Live long and prosper! xx **

* * *

Marcus told them he didn't remember what happened. He lied.

* * *

This is what he remembers: running, hiding, quiet sobbing. He remembers his mother, and his sister, and he remembers where he left them. He remembers _your execution is so ordered._ He remembers, more clearly than anything else, the boy with the blue eyes, reaching down a gentle hand not much larger than his own, a little girl already cradled to his chest.

(That's _little Jimmy Kirk,_ said his mother, an age ago. _Don't you go playing with him, my Marcus, he's a_ wild _boy._

 _He's cute,_ said Evangeline, because she was reaching the age where girls begin to feel that their mothers aren't quite as knowing as they used to be.)

 _Come on,_ said not-so-little Jimmy Kirk with his too-blue eyes, and Marcus grabbed his fingers with a terrified desperation.

* * *

Here is what he remembers: bleeding blisters on weary feet, collapsing every night and waking up only to start running yet again.

The sunsets were red, and everyone but Marcus tried not to look at them. He thought that what had happened didn't diminish the sunset's beauty.

Here is what he remembers: passing through villages that Kodos had deemed unnecessary, slipping on slick blood on cobbled streets, flinching when rocks tumbled down hills.

 _"J.T,"_ said Jimmy, and Marcus didn't say a word, because Jimmy's blue eyes looked less scared when he was in control.

Here is what he remembers: huddling together with the other children in the backs of dark caves, helping the Vulcan girl bind J.T's bleeding side, playing _Starfleet_ with the youngest of the children in their band of runaways until Thomas asked them to _please_ stop.

But this isn't all that he remembers.

He remembers: laughing in delight, quietly, when JT brought back a dice he'd found on his daily scourge. Piling on top of Thomas and J.T at night so that they'd be able to get some sleep. Racing Flora through the dead fields to see who could reach what fastest, for such is the beauty of children: after a while, everything becomes normal.

They're remarkably adaptable creatures that aren't given enough credit, and Tarsus proved to be no exception, especially for children like Marcus.

* * *

"You lied, didn't you," said Flora, after they'd been beamed aboard the Starfleet ship and medically examined.

"Yes," said Marcus.

Flora twisted her mouth in disgust. "Lying is the coward's way," she said scornfully, and Marcus frowned sternly at her. "Hiding in the shadows, waiting to stab you in the back. _Pah_."

"Hiding is how we _survived_ ," said Marcus. "Hiding is _safe_."

* * *

Marcus remembered what happened on Tarsus, and he certainly didn't want it to be forgotten, but he would not let others take his words and make them their own.

* * *

They're nothing like the _Starfleet_ from the game that the children from Tarsus used to play. That Starfleet was full of brave officers; exploring new worlds; vanquishing evil; wild and free and _untamable_. This Starfleet is full of worried people with concerned eyes and thoughtful frowns; speaking with hushed voices in the hallways; with pale, space-bleached skin; uncertain and alarmed and _shy_ when dealing with children who'd experienced more horror than most people ever would.

"Cowards, the lot of them," spat Flora, raising her battered knuckles up against the uncaring world. "What good do words do, huh? I'd rather use my fists." She nodded, firm and unyielding in her belief.

" _Hm_ ," said Marcus, feet swinging on the edge of the bio-bed. Flora was an angry wisp of a girl, changing the world one punch at a time.

"They're stupid," agreed Lana, "but J.T always said stupid people can be used to your advantage." She twirled a butter knife from Marcus's plate between her thin fingers.

" _Hm_ ," hummed Marcus, watching Lana slip shiny metal forks into her socks. Lana was wiry and small and used her blinking blue eyes to distract people while she kicked their knees out from under them.

Marcus loved them both, Flora and Lana, both so changed after Tarsus, but he disagreed with their words. Starfleet only wanted to help, after all, and it didn't so much matter if it worked or not, because what mattered was that they tried.

There is a certain strength in walking through the fires of hell and refusing to let it bend and mold you into something you never thought you could become, and that was Marcus's strength. There is a power in kindness, gentle and immovable, and there is wisdom in love. Marcus had learnt that from his mother and his sister and he had learnt it from little Jimmy Kirk and from Vulcan Desmia and cruel Tarsus sunsets and all of them together, but most of all he had allowed himself become someone he wanted to be and that someone was kind, not cruel.

(This was not to say that Marcus didn't respect Lana and Flora and J.T's kind of strength; but rather to say that he knew that strength came in many forms and none distracted from the other.)

* * *

When they ask him if he wanted to stay with his friends once they land on Earth, he says yes, please, and thank you.

They don't listen.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: _Thank you so much._ I've seriously read every review like five hundred times, they mean so much to me! :) Shoutout to  knightphoenix2 for brightening my day so much!** **Live Long and Prosper all! xx**

* * *

Flora McIntyre knows a thing or two about hating people.

Since even before Tarsus IV, she has had an ever-growing anger inside of her. _"What changed?" Asks the third therapist._ All that happened on that planet is that she let it take over. (And it was about damn time.) _"Flora?" Flora gets up and leaves._

They tell her it's natural. That after what she's lived through, _(you can say it, you know,)_ it's perfectly normal, _(then why am I here?)_ and that she can talk to them about any of it. _(She sent one therapist out crying in the first twelve minutes. Another threw up.)_

Flora isn't stupid. She knows what they want her to do. Cry, maybe. Beg for forgiveness. Confess to some inhumane sin. (She doesn't regret anything she did.) _Flora McIntyre survived Tarsus IV,_ they write on her reports. _Flora McIntyre requires psychiatric aid_. (Flora sits in silence and raises one perfect eyebrow.) She doesn't tell them what they want to hear, because she's not a liar. Call her what you will, but she _will not be a liar._

Instead, she walks home, lies down in the orphanage home bed, (rock solid and as comfortable to her as satin,) and stares at the ceiling. She recites Andorian numbers back and forth from two hundred like J.T taught her. She'll get two, maybe three, (maybe four, on a good day,) hours of sleep. She goes to school, sits alone in the lunch break, and practices stabbing techniques in her mind. She stays out late, walking nowhere, and she'll return to the orphanage under the cover of the stars.

Nothing ever changes.

* * *

(That's not true. She'll hack into Starfleet reports and see if they've found Kodos' body yet. She'll email Kevin, who they wouldn't let stay in the same orphanage as her, and they'll laugh over meaningless things and cry over the same meaningless things. She'll write long, angry poems or scrawling masses of hateful words, and she'll save them took a folder on her PADD that she never opens. She'll surf the net for blue-eyed boys. She'll have hour long video-conferences with Marcus, sitting in silence and saying nothing. She does anything and nothing at all.)

It's funny: she'd always thought living through Tarsus would be the hardest thing she'd ever have to do. Turns out, it's learning to live in the aftermath.

* * *

She listens to those around her and blinks at them when they laugh nervously and say thing like _'you're so quiet, Flora,'_ and _'speak up now, dear.'_ Flora is quiet, yes, but it's a choice. She knows how to blend, how to be invisible. (It's easier to go for the jugular when you know where that is.)

She learnt from the best, after all.

There are good days and there are bad days. She finds Lena,( _"Lana,"_ ) she gets in a fistfight. Marcus visits, she almost has a panic attack on the street because she thought- just for a minute- that the blue-eyed vendor was J.T. She comes top in her class for ninety percent of her classes, Starfleet decides to pay her a visit.

 _Starfleet_. If there is anything she hates more than Tarsus, it is Starfleet. (She remembers, precisely, what the first thing she heard a Starfleet officer say: "Good work, Josh, you've found another." _Good work._ Not "Oh, gods, is that a kid? Are you okay?" No. _Good work._ ) She throws a knife at the head of one of the officers who visits her to "check how she's doing". She's doing _well,_ thanks! (Not well enough, maybe. She missed.)

* * *

Because Flora not being a liar? That's not quite right. She does lie. To herself, all the time. "I'm okay," she whispers, eyes darting around a marketplace because oh god that was a phazer wasn't it _runjumphide_ , "I'm fine," she says to her physics teacher, running on caffeine and stress alone, not having slept for seventy-two hours because _tearsbloodsweatscreaminghelpme_ , "Just leave me alone," she says to poor Marcus, angry and hurt because another family rejected her at the last minute, but _she doesn't need them, she doesn't need anyone._

(Marcus doesn't hang up, of course he doesn't. There are days where Flora wishes she wasn't the way she was, and if she had to pick someone to be it'd be him.)

* * *

She turns eighteen (eighteen with knuckles that never scab over before she's punching something else, eighteen with hair she wears wild and bushy because it draws attention away from the two pink scars on her chin and cheeks that couldn't be fully erased, eighteen with piles of paper in her hands that scream of her broken, bleeding heart that she swears she'll never show another soul,) and they let her leave the home.

She buys an apartment with Marcus and she loves it, despite the psychiatrists saying _it'll be easier to heal when you're around other people, (_ normal _people, Flora thinks,) it'll be faster to heal if you try to move on, (Flora doesn't_ want _to move on,) it'd be better to heal with "supportive" and "understanding" people around you. (_ Marcus is as supportive and understanding as they get, _Flora replies.)_

Flora doesn't heal, but she accepts.

* * *

She curls up on the couch with Marcus and they watch crappy reruns of ancient Earth shows. She gets a job as an engineer and he studies chemistry at a nearby academy. She sits, late at night, and types until her fingers cramp.

She wakes up screaming, but Marcus is always there.

She thought, when Tarsus IV had just been liberated and her wounds were still oozing blood, that it'd be better to separate herself, to distance herself from those she loved, to grow strong and brave by herself. She'd forgotten that J.T had always taught them to stick together, but she remembers that now.

She hopes that wherever he is, he remembers that too.

* * *

(They publish her book on her twentieth birthday and she smiles and laughs and feels lighter than she ever has before.)


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Whoo! Half way through, people! I just want to thank you all for reading this story, and a extra thanks to _wild-springflower_ and _knightphoenix2,_ my marvellous reviewers! Please, if you can spare a moment of your time, reviews brighten my day. Hugs to all, and live long and prosper! xx**

* * *

She's no hero, but she's no villain either. The saddest part is that after a while, she forgets that she was ever anything.

They lock her in solitary confinement. _For her own safety_ is what they say, and she wants to burn them to the ground like they burned her home. It's a cell, with four steel grey walls and one cement floor and no windows at all. The lights come on at six in the morning and go off at six at night. The cameras in the corner of the wall never stop blinking red, and food slides in from under the always-locked door three times a day. She's walked from wall to wall more times than she could count, screamed until her throat was raw, and scraped until her fingers bled.

Lenore Karidian wasn't given the honour of a fair trial, or any trial at all. They threw her in a jail cell and called it safety, but she knew the truth. The less people knew about her the better, and the less people saw of her the easier it'd be to pretend she never existed at all.

She spends hours screaming at the cameras on the wall. The world wants to erase her, but she won't let them. She's the kind of girl who doesn't want to be forgotten, and it's the type of world that wants to image that it's perfect and shiny and _good_ without death and pain and _evil_ lurking underneath the pristine wallpaper of the galaxy's showroom. She knows better.

Her mugshots are nothing special. Matted red ringlets; plain brown eyes with long lashes; a clenched, refined jawline; she was only _thirteen_. She blends into the shadows of space and nobody ever looks twice at the teenager hidden away in the darkest parts of the galaxy, where no-one would expect a Starfleet prison to be stationed. Lenore knows better, she always knows better.

* * *

They say she's committed war crimes. "What about the other nine?" spits Lenore, fear and spite and anger wrapped into the pale ghost of a girl. "What about _their_ war crimes?"

"They're different," says Starfleet.

"You mean _they_ were on the _right side_ ," Lenore growls, filling in the blanks, and she knows she's right.

The officer raises an eyebrow and Lenore's stomach sinks into her feet.

She didn't ask for be on the wrong side, she never _wanted_ to be, but there are some things you just can't say to your homicidal father. Lenore didn't ask for _Him_ either, but Starfleet won't care about that. They don't want to hear about the way she'd throw up everything she'd eaten after a meal with Him because He was off to sign away more lives; the way she'd hide around the corners of hallways when she saw the guards because _they'd_ lost people _too_ and she was the perfect revenge; the way she cried into her pillow at night because the ear-splitting silence burned where there had once been the chatter of maids and officials and students.

Starfleet won't want to know about the way her father said _"your mother's not coming home, Lenore,"_ or the way she had to watch her class dwindle and die out until she was the only one left. They won't want to know how the _fear_ felt, the always-present fear that _I'm not good enough, I'm next, what's stopping Him from killing me like He's killed everyone else_.

All Starfleet cares about, really, is that she stood by (afraid) and allowed everything to carry out the way He planned (what was she supposed to do?) and after it all she looked her father in the eyes and shot him four times through the chest (and it felt amazing!).

"You don't understand," sneers Lenore, lip curling, "because people are only allowed to kill one another when it's the end of the world and society's fallen apart, when there's nobody left to care." It's a plea for help, but Starfleet can't hear it because they choose not to.

(Why would the child of a monster be anything less than he?)

* * *

Once every six months, they send in a medical examiner, backed by two guards, in case the stringy teenage girl tries anything funny. On her seventh annual visit, she grabs the needle out of her arm, stabs it into the doctor's eye, jabs one elbow into a guard's mouth and then a fist to his gut, and kicks the other into the wall. She's running before he's even slumped to the ground, and at sixteen years old Lenore Karidian becomes an official fugitive of the law. She won't let Starfleet erase her and she won't let them lock her up and hide her away, and she's finally doing whatever she wants and she's _free_.

* * *

It doesn't last long. She has the unfortunate luck to try and steal a pirate's phaser and he kicks her, dragging and screaming, to his boss- the infamous Cy Sibus, who even Lenore knows about, although she's only been out of jail for a few weeks. He looks her up and down, the scrawny teen with long, ratty hair and bruises under her eyes, but then she doesn't care because standing behind him is a boy with the bluest eyes she's ever seen.

" _Jimmy,_ " she hisses, and his eyes go wide, and she knows she was right.

She throws off the pirates with more strength than she knew she possessed and lunges for him, red-hot rage encompassing every fibre of her being. He stumbles back in surprise and her thin fingers wrap around his neck, and then they're tossing around on the floor in a battle for survival. She wants him to _die_ , she wants him to _suffer_ like she did for _four_ damn _years_ , she wants to prove-

Cy pulls them off each other, with a critical eye, and declares that she gets to stay. She folds her arms across her chest, feet dangling, and hopes Jimmy dies a slow and painful death. He looks like he echoes the sentiment.

* * *

He's different, she realises. (So is she. She wonders if he can tell.) It's not just his physical appearance, though there is that, it's his whole _being_. Last time she'd seen him, he was a skeletal, tortured little boy with blood dripping from his back and his wrists, steady hands clenched around the handle of a gun he'd stolen from one of her father's dratted guards. The time before that, he'd been a competitive, sassy boy with an above genius-level IQ with messy sun-bleached hair, freckles, and a blinding grin. He's filled out since then, shoulders broader, muscles more prominent and less emaciated, dark-blonde hair falling to just above his shoulders, scars on his hands that she's never seen before. His eyes are still _angry_ and _sad_ , as they always have been, even before Kodos, but they're more guarded. This Jimmy could stab her in the back and she'd only notice as she started falling to the ground.

He shows her around the ship and tells her how things work and she wonders, faintly, what happened to lead him to a pirate ship in uncharted space. She wonders what happened to lead her here, and she realises that she doesn't care anymore. She's here, and she's alive, and she's going to make a new start for herself.

* * *

They become friends by accident, and it takes her a while to realise that it happened at all. They're sparring and he grins, chattering about the job they've just completed for Cy, and then they're packing up, and he leans over to kiss her cheek before bounding off into the shadows, and she realises that he's her best friend.

They're not the good guys, but they're happy anyway. She laughs about it, sometimes, thinking what Starfleet would say if they could see their golden boy's son where he is now, slinking around with the lowlifes, dancing around space with a devil-may-care attitude that puts hers to shame. She and Jimmy ( _Jim_ ,) get drunk and cry together and laugh together and she wonders at the broken people that they are, revelling in their self-made freedom, breathing in every moment of life because they know what it means to live without living at all.

She's not sure what they are, partners, friends, best friends, friends but maybe with benefits, siblings, a couple. She isn't sure but she doesn't mind. Jim know the broken parts of her and she knows the broken parts of him and that's all they are, broken people in a broken world, but that's okay, and not okay too, and _that's_ okay as well.

She's not a villain and she's not a hero but she's happy enough with her patchwork quilt of a life, with her brother-lover-friend and her boss-mentor-guide and her ship-home-job and space-journey-life. She's happy enough.

* * *

Only, it turns out, she may have been happy but Jim mustn't have been because he leaves.

He's seventeen and he leaves her and her life behind. Maybe he hated it, she thinks, or maybe he loved it, and she can't decide which is worse.

Cy sends her to kill him and she doesn't do it, but she does find him.

"I see you again," she tells him, "I kill you." She doesn't mean it, probably, maybe. She's not sure what'd be right.

"Good to know," he says, smiling his real smile, soft and gentle and everything that Jim's not.

She leaves, and her heart doesn't break, but she wonders. In ten years, she just _knows_ , Jim Kirk is either gonna be a long-dead nobody or a name that the whole galaxy is gonna know. (She can't decide which she prefers.)

* * *

She goes back to Cy, and she keeps doing her jobs, and she might not be as happy as she once was but she's okay, and she's moved on. Maybe she's moved on in a bad way, (becoming a liar and a thief and a killer and everything else,) but she's moved on nevertheless and she's glad! Starfleet couldn't _break_ her and they couldn't hold her _down_ and she's proved them _wrong_ and there's _nothing_ she loves more than proving someone wrong.

And besides, if there's one thing she's _never_ going to have to worry about, it's Jim joining Starfleet, which would be the _one_ thing she _couldn't_ forgive.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Hello all! I hope you're having a marvellous day.** **To answer some questions from last chapter:**

 **wild-springflower: yes, Lenore Karidian was Kodos' daughter in TOS, though I've watched a total of one episode, so my characterisation and ideas for her are pretty much all AU to my knowledge. :)**

 **knightphoenix2: I think that my meaning actually came across badly last chapter, oops... I meant to say that we'd crossed over halfway; the fourth chapter. I might be open to writing a ninth chapter, but I haven't gotten any plans yet. :)**

 **Thank you both _so much_ for your lovely reviews yet again! I've read them all soo many times, I could probably recite them in my sleep by now. Reviews mean so much to me, so thank you! Another thanks to _Klycmep_ , who I am terriby ashamed to admit I forgot to mention last chapter. Your reviews all brighten my day and really push me to keep writing. So... after that embaressingly long authors note, I bring you chapter six. (Not sure how I feel about this one, to be honest, so let me know how you feel. ;)) Live long and prosper! xx**

* * *

The thing about life, Thomas had learned long ago, was that there _were_ no fairytale endings, but everyone expected to receive one anyways. Reality, he knew, was an unfortunately plain place. Some people were unlucky enough to receive harder lives than most, but there was no changing that and never would be.

His first foster mother, a middle-aged woman named Martha, liked to tell him that if he simply worked hard enough he could do anything he wanted. Thomas would roll his single eye and ignore her, because the honest truth was that even if he worked _as hard as he could_ he would _still_ be unable to achieve certain things that others may be more inclined to, just as he was more likely to be able to do certain things that others in different positions wouldn't. Thomas, for instance, was far more likely to die at an alarmingly young age than Martha's biological son, who worked as a banker in San Francisco and was already married. Thomas accepted this! Life wouldn't change just because one boy thought it was unfair, and life hadn't changed when four thousand people _knew_ it was unfair. He wouldn't dwell on it, though. (He barely lasted half a year with Martha anyways.)

Thomas was nearing seventeen by the time Starfleet dragged their asses down to Tarsus, and some might say it was partially due to this that Thomas was never particularly bothered to listen to the possible parental figures in his life after the massacre. He turned eighteen, jumped a shuttle to the Mars Colony, and started his new life with a vigour that would have surprised placid old Martha. Earth was awful and petty and dull, but in _space_? In _space_ Thomas could be anyone or anything he wanted. An ambassador's son, a lively vagabond, a mercenary, or _anything else_ he felt like being. In _space_ , or at least in the parts of space where Thomas lurked, nobody really cared enough to check up on aliases and identities unless you were causing trouble, which Thomas wasn't, not at first.

He picked apart engines and tore apart lives, fooled around with a girl or seventy, and got as far away as he could from the mess that was Tarsus IV. He loved it and he hated it and he felt nothing, all at once.

* * *

Maybe if he'd ever actually _gone_ to the Starfleet therapists, instead of going out to a bar, he'd have listened to something, anything, that they'd said, and then things wouldn't have ended up the way they did. But he didn't, and he didn't care either, and things ended up the way he destined them to be.

* * *

The first time he got thrown in jail, he was honestly so surprised that he didn't even bother to try breaking out for the first night. The two nights after that were because he simply didn't know how to. He ran on his fourth night in jail, which can be blamed on the fact that it was mostly empty and in a rather quaint part of the Black. So began a self-destructive habit. He'd see how long he could get away with his shenanigans, (not his word choice,) before he'd be thrown into jail. Once in a prison, he'd see how long it would take him to break out. It was stupid; it was fun.

It was a challenge, and it was flipping the bird to both the people in his life who thought he could be someone and the people who didn't.

He drank and he fought and he laughed uproariously at the most morbid of jokes, though that could just be because Thomas always did have a warped sense of humour. He wasn't a psychopath, or a sociopath, or deranged, or any of the other assorted names they threw at him; he was bored and he was free, though not always in the usual sense of the word.

He played the game because he wanted to, not because he didn't know how _not_ to.

* * *

He tried, once or twice, to settle down. Find a girl, get a job, rent a place. He was always smart, maybe not smart in the way that Jim was, (and yeah, he knows it's _Jim_ , not _J.T._ They went to the same school, and Jim may have managed to convince the others that he was someone else, but Thomas wasn't fooled. Jim was the same kind, compassionate, quiet boy, even in the hell that was Tarsus.) but he was smart nevertheless. He could get a job, it was simply up to him to decide if he wanted to.

It's supposed to be normal and safe and _secure_ , but he jumped at the shadows and flinched at the bright white walls of his apartment. He slipped knives up his sleeves, which he never normally did, and bared his teeth when he smiled. Thomas Leighton was forced to come to the conclusion that he'd lived in chaos so long that he no longer knew how to live without it.

It's _weird_ , really. He's relaxed and calm and controlled, even when faced with terrifying aliens and the like, but sit him behind a desk with normal responsibilities and his knees begin to quake and his palms grow sweaty. Thomas doesn't dwell on it, doesn't think for too long about it, because it's his way to deal with his life and his problems. If he pretends they don't exist, maybe they'll go away, and eventually he knows he'll forget about them completely.

He never got the chance to find out if his theories are correct.

* * *

Thomas meets his tragic end; a month, three days, and twenty-one hours after his twenty-fifth birthday. It's quick, which he was glad about. Knife to the gut and knife to the heart, three stabs in quick succession. He doesn't have any regrets, lying on the dirty floor of a crowded bar in the Orion galaxy, and you could swear there was a smile on his chapped lips as he drifted off.

* * *

Surviving Tarsus, he'd learned very long ago, in no way guaranteed that you'd survive the rest of the galaxy. It was just the way the world was, and he liked it that way.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: So this update is a tad early but I'm going ona three day school trip (!) in a couple days and wanted to get it out of the way. :) on another note, thank you all so much! 9 reviews, 19 followers, 12 favourites, and over 700 views. You guys are _the best ever_. Thank you! Enjoy chapter 7. Live long and prosper! xx**

 **Disclaimer: I still don't own Star Trek. :(**

* * *

"Everything's okay now, ma'am," Kevin says reassuringly. "You're safe now. I'm with Starfleet, and you can trust me. You're gonna be just fine."

The mirror doesn't respond, but Kevin isn't too bothered.

* * *

"What d'you want to be when you grow up, Kevin?"

Kevin grins in all his nine-year-old confidence. "Starfleet," he chirps proudly, carrying his lunch-tray over to his usual table.

"Wow," says Margie, admiration clear. "You've gotta be really smart, don't you?"

Kevin shrugs. He knows he can do it. He just has to push himself, but that's okay. He won't mind.

* * *

"You sure you want to do this, Kevin?" asks the therapist, glasses perched on the end of his nose, stylus hovering uncertainly over his PADD. "Starfleet? Aren't you worried that kind of job might bring up some... bad memories? Wouldn't you rather have a nice, normal job?"

Kevin chews his lip and shakes his head. "Nah," he says, unconcerned, "Starfleet is where I wanna go." The therapist runs his tongue over his teeth and sighs almost imperceptibly before writing something down reluctantly.

* * *

"Ugh," says Flora, nose wrinkled. " _Ugh_." Marus elbows her side.

"Good on you, Kev," he says kindly. "Those are the grades you wanted, right?"

Kevin nods. "Yep, I can _officially_ apply for the Academy now!" Marcus' smile is a bit too tight, a bit too strained, his eyes too worried.

" _Ugh_ ," says Flora empathetically.

* * *

"Oh, marvellous, Kev!" says Mom. Kevin grins, his arms wrapped around his foster mom's plump waist.

She chuckles and pats his hair, and he can hear her smile through the vibrations in her chest. "Always knew you could do it, my boy," she says warmly, and his grin lights up their little world. "Promise you'll write to me, every week- no, every _day_! I want to know everything about the Academy, you hear me, dear?" Kevin nods perkily, trying to go for a serious expression and failing terribly.

"I'll be safe," he promises solemnly, and then a grin splits open on his face and he grabs Mom's hands, dancing with her around their little kitchen, bell tinkling laughter lasting long after it's faded.

* * *

He's in sciences division and he loves every minute of it. Maybe he loves certain moments less than others, (hello, ten-page research tasks,) but he loves it all nonetheless. He goes out with his dorm mates and watches them get drunk, laughing, not touching a drop of alcohol. He writes to his foster mom every week as he promised, and a copy of Flora's book rests in his drawer, pristine and untouched.

* * *

He's less than a year away from graduation when the Narada Incident comes to pass, and he's watching the TV with his girlfriend Sal when the crew of the USS Enterprise disembarks from their battle-scarred flagship, eyes triumphant and bodies slumped. Their captain is the last to leave from the bridge crew.

Kevin knows those eyes, those brilliant blue eyes, and he knows that smile, and he _knows_ that man, he _knows_ that wonderful, brave, brave man.

Sal sticks a hand to his forehead and asks if he's feeling a tad peaky, he's gone awfully pale, love. Kevin dismisses himself apologetically and then slides down against the wall of his bathroom, chest heaving, eyes filling with salt. His fingers shake as he calls Marcus and they weep together, uncertain if they're crying out of happiness or if they're grieving. Whatever would they be grieving for, Kevin wonders in bewilderment, but he mourns nonetheless.

It's almost like redemption. J.T, that beautiful brave little boy, their fierce and brutal leader, _he's_ Starfleet _too_. Kevin wants to shout with the wonder of it all; see, you doubting therapists, see, scoffing Flora, see, worried Marcus, J.T is here too, I'm not alone, I was right, I'm not crazy!

* * *

It's another three years before he's finally, ( _finally,_ ) assigned to the Enterprise. He knocks on J.T's- on _Jim's_ door, and his breath catches as it slides open and two curious blue eyes are peering out at him.

He doesn't hesitate in throwing his arms around his exhausted Captain ( _Captain_!) and after a moment Jim's arms follow suite.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: You guys! We've reached the final chapter! *screaming* It's been such fun, seriously, and a really great learning experience for me. I think I can hereby declare my first fanfiction story a resounding success. ;) Over 1000 views, (!) 11 reviews, (thankyouthankyouthankyou!) 20 followers, and 14 followers. Y'all are the ones who motivated me to keep going with this, so I can't thank you enough. A million hugs to all!**

 **On to the chapter notes, after that ramble: Ohh my goodness. This chapter was so hard to write. After so long piecing Jim together through the eyes of others, I had no idea how to write him up close, so I'm not sure how well this turned out... Please do let me know what you think! Also, if anyone's interested in more of my Star Trek work, I have another story published called little boy blue, that I'm actually rather proud of. If anyone's wondering, I do also have some more ideas and stories in the makings, but school is getting pretty busy so I may be a bit slow-paced, I'm afraid.**

 **Once again, thank you for reading my story and sticking with me through my Trek journey. It's been a blast, and it's far from over, I can assure you. Live long and prosper! xx**

* * *

Battles leave marks on a man. Jim knows this better than most.

He tells himself that what's done is done and what he's lived through happened a long time ago. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. He tells himself that he can't change the past and he's moved on besides it. Maybe it's a lie, maybe it's not. He tells himself he doesn't mind, doesn't care; doesn't hear what people whisper behind his back when they think he can't hear. He always hears them. He always has.

He tries to believe that if he smiles long enough he'll start to mean it, and maybe it works but maybe it doesn't.

* * *

When Starfleet asks for his next of kin he left the space blank. (That open wound had finally scabbed over years ago, so he'd thought.) When the shrink they made him talk to asks him how he feels, he says he's fine and laughs to make sure the maybe-lie sticks. (He knows that the sheer amount of problems he has could drag a lesser man down. He's no lesser man, he's fine.) When they ask him to talk at the anniversary of the Kelvin Disaster he shrugs and pretends it doesn't burn. (They don't wish him a happy birthday. That's okay, he's never celebrated it before.)

He didn't have a plan when he signed up for joining the organisation that screwed up his life five times over, and he can't fault the way the other cadets grumble because they've been waiting years to get into Starfleet and he was accepted when he still reeked of alcohol.

The Academy is really nothing he's never seen before, but that's nothing new. Jim'd seen more of life (and death) than most dirtsiders ever would by the time he turned ten. He says _sir_ and _ma'am_ and doesn't think about the last time he had to do that, on a backwater planet by the name of Tarsus.

(He's careful with what he says, though no one can tell, because he knows how people can twist others' words. He knows how to blend into the crowd, and sometimes it's just to be so bright and loud that people stop paying attention to him. He knows how to bite his tongue, how to smile with his teeth and not with his heart. He's playing a dangerous game but he loves it too much to stop.)

He's fit, fitter than he's ever been, (fitter than he was when he was running for his life; fitter than he was as a vagabond mercenary; fitter than he was when he was nothing more or less than stardust, jumping from galaxy to galaxy,) and he breezes through all the physical stuff cadets have to go through. He's smart, as he always has been, and even though he's hungover in half his classes he passes with flying colours, sparking up the rumours that he sleeps his way to the top or bribes the teachers with his dead daddy's famous name. (Oh, how Jim hates his father some days.)

He's loud but not brash, he's sassy but respectful, he's funny but not outrageous. If his last name wasn't Kirk, he could even be likeable.

They love to hate him, and they hate to love him, and Jim watches them and can't decide whether to laugh or cry.

He doesn't have a plan, no, but then he meets Bones and somehow things change.

McCoy is hilarious. Jim can't get enough of the guy. He's got aviophovia, and yet he's in Starfleet. They're the odd ones out, McCoy and Jim, and Jim likes him for that alone. He's not sure what Bones- McCoy- sees in him, but the older man never tells him to piss off once and for all, and he never just up and leaves like Jim had instinctively expected him to.

He didn't plan for Bones, so things change without him even realising it. Suddenly Jim has a (mostly normal) friend, which is new and not altogether unwanted. He has someone who cares if he disappears for a weekend, who grumbles and grouches but loves with his whole heart and soul. It's nice.

* * *

The Narada Incident comes and passes, and Jim's still Jim. He's strong; he knows he can get through it. He won't fall apart, no matter what people expect, and he never has before. What's so special about Jim is that when he smiles he means it, no matter what's really going on. His confidence isn't faked, it's just over-exaggerated so that everyone else has no choice but to believe him. He knows what he's capable of, he's seen what he can do. But this is important; this is who he is. It's not that Jim thinks he's unimportant, it's simply that he knows there's always someone who's a bit more important. Bones, Jim's best friend, and a better brother than Sam ever was, will never understand this simply because Jim's mind is a chaotic spiralling mess of genius and it doesn't make much sense to anyone but himself.

Except, things change after the Narada Incident, because suddenly Jim has a crew. Being a Captain is nothing new, he's been leading people for _years_ , manipulating them even when he was a little boy flying through the stars with a crazy mother and an angry brother, but now he has a crew, who are supposed to love him and who followed him to their certain deaths even though they may not have liked him all that much beforehand. Jim's used to Bones; and Gaila, who's now dead; and Uhura sometimes, who was a maybe-friend, despite their banter; and pretty much no one else, which Jim didn't mind in the least. But now his little family has added four-hundred members and that's certainly unexpected. He's not use to having to fake his laughter for so many people who genuinely care, and it's harder to convince people that you aren't bleeding when there's an entire group circling you.

His friends learn to help him, whether they know it or not. He relaxes, he smiles easier, he breathes. He's _happy_.

* * *

He's worried that it'll be his downfall.


End file.
